


Hogmanay

by Sissi459



Category: Call the Midwife
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:02:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28397364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sissi459/pseuds/Sissi459
Summary: A Slightly Steamy, Classic Series 2 Turnadette New Year’s Eve fic…with Scotch! Because you know you want these two tipsy together…
Relationships: Bernadette | Shelagh Turner & Patrick Turner, Bernadette | Shelagh Turner/Patrick Turner
Comments: 20
Kudos: 45





	Hogmanay

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve committed the cardinal romance sin of writing the scene from both her perspective and his – at least, until she gets too tipsy and I let him mostly take over the narrative. Sorry not sorry. You know we all want to know what’s inside both of their adorable heads.

Scene:

New Year’s Eve, 1958-1959 (during timeframe of S2 Christmas Special)

Story:

The cold air of the brilliant night shot sharp through Shelagh’s clothes as Patrick opened the door of the London Hospital. It was New Year’s Eve, and as they emerged into the night, they left behind them a sleepy, happy Timothy, sated on Horlick’s and Quality Street. A sleepy, happy, and increasingly _healthy_ Timothy. Gratitude to God and the forces of medicine suffused both parents, making them walk light and merrily into the biting wind.

Patrick offered her his elbow, and Shelagh slipped her cold hands happily into place at his side. He smiled down at her, tugging his hat on tighter to accommodate the gusts. She returned his grin, feeling positively giddy. Christmas had been such a wreck, so full of worry—it was unimaginable that this holiday, so soon after it, was full of hope and laughter.

“Brrr!” Patrick interrupted her thoughts. “Let’s get home!”

Shelagh warmed a little inside. He hadn’t said let’s get _you_ home, or back, or any of those other phrases that she was growing to despise for they forced separation they presaged. Had he said it unconsciously?

“Let’s!” she agreed warmly, falling into step at his side. The wind cut her face, but Patrick was still grinning at her rather soppily. She knew why—or thought she did.

“Timmy seems so well!” she said, her eyes never leaving her fiancé’s warm face.

“He does!” Patrick agreed. “I hadn’t hoped for the regain of so much muscle tone so soon. You know, it usually takes four to six weeks to recover normal neural function in the affected limbs –” she could hear his didactic doctor’s voice creeping in, and she laughed softly.

“Yes, Patrick. I do know.”

He stopped, both talking and walking, and smiled a bit ruefully.

“Sorry. I forget you used to be Sister Bernadette. We seem such worlds away from that.”

She smiled a little, and glanced at her shoes on the icy pavement. He was right, of course. And it was so good, most times.

“We are,” she said slowly, looking up at his face again. “But my medical knowledge survives unscathed.” Her tone was playful, but the little worry-lines etched between her eyebrows spoke to something not entirely humorous.

He bent to kiss her forehead smooth.

“I know,” he said, gloved hand toying with her hair, tucking it behind her ear. “And I see you with Timothy—you’re still the best nurse I know.”

To be perfectly fair, he had realized a few days before as he watched her with his son that he had rather missed this side of her. He had known Sister Bernadette, skillful and gentle nurse, before he had ever known Shelagh, the bold girl who shared his cigarettes and met him on a misty road. In fact, he sometimes felt like her personalities had switched. So often in the last few months, she had been shy and quiet, uncertain of herself, tentative in this new world. Sometimes, he oddly missed Sister Bernadette’s certainty and spirit. He would never tell her that—he didn’t have the words to do it kindly or comprehensibly, and he wouldn’t make her feel any more self-conscious than she already did. But he could tell her that he loved seeing her nurse Timothy, so he did.

The glow of pride in her face told him it was the right thing to do.

She raised one hand to clasp the gloved fingers resting at her cheek.

“Now, let’s get you home before we both freeze to death,” he said, resuming a quick tempo toward the car.

Internally, Shelagh wondered if he meant the boarding house, or _home_ home. She hadn’t quite the heart to ask.

Not until they were settled in the car, and well down the road, did she lean toward him on the bench seat and shyly whisper,

“Patrick? It’s New Year’s Eve.”

His eyes met hers, shining in the dark. He was acutely aware of her hand, pressing into the seat mere inches from his thigh. She didn’t know that, but she wasn’t wholly oblivious to the sensation of something indefinable in the air.

“So it is,” he replied, returning his eyes to the road with difficulty.

“I feel we should celebrate,” she continued.

“Are you suggesting we find somewhere to go out?” He sounded as if he might be game.

She pursed her lips, thinking. She had no idea where they would go. And it was much too cold to just walk somewhere romantic.

“Where would you normally go?” she asked.

The question startled him. Truth be told, he hadn’t thought about New Year’s Eve in some time. Certainly not the last one, nor the one before, when Marianne lay raggedly dying in the same hospital in which his son was now recovering. Could it possibly be only two years ago? He felt he’d aged five years, and lived an entire decade, and then aged backward a score since then. He nearly shivered with the magnitude of it all. Perhaps Shelagh wasn’t the only one whose world had changed unrecognizably.

“Home,” he answered honestly. “And hope I didn’t get called out.” His face cracked a rather wry half-smile. “I’m sorry. I suppose that’s rather dull.”

Her voice came quick, and nearer his ear than usual.

“Not if we have champagne.”

It took a beat for her words to sink in. Had she just said—? He craned his neck to look at her, instead of the road, again as they came to a stop at a crossroads. Except for the fact that she had inclined delicately toward him on the seat, she looked as sweet and inscrutable as ever.

“And do you?” he asked.

“Do I what?” she replied.

“Have any champagne?”

“Oh,” she said, slightly deflated. “Noo. Do you?”

“No,” he was forced to admit, and she sank back against the seat on her own side, looking—adorably—disappointed.

“I suppose the off-license is closed by now, it being a holiday,” she mourned. The children at the hospital had been allowed to stay up until half-eight for their party.

To be fair, Patrick probably knew where to find one, but he’d had a sudden wild hare of a thought as the car plowed toward home. He had no idea if it would work, but something told him to try it and see what happened.

“I may have an idea,” he said.

Shelagh said nothing, but her face brightened a little.

He drove the rest of the way to the flat in silence, struggling not to speed in his burgeoning excitement. Had Shelagh Mannion really just agreed to spend New Year’s Eve drinking in his flat? Nay—suggested it? Patrick frankly couldn’t believe his good fortune.

For her part, Shelagh was mystified. There was the ornamental bottle of brandy on the sideboard, but she’d never seen him drink that—and it wasn’t much to her taste, either. She knew there had been a bottle of gin in the sideboard, but she also suspected it hadn’t been replaced since those terrible nights a week or so ago, when anxiety had reigned in the household. Perhaps he meant not to drink at all?

They arrived at the flat, and Patrick practically leapt to run around the car and pull her door open, scarf and overcoat flying out behind him. It reminded her briefly of when he’d run toward her on that misty road in October, and it warmed her heart just a little bit more as she stepped back out into the cold.

Wordlessly, they slipped in through the door, one after the other, and he shut it against the brisk wind and the first falling flakes of snow.

“Brrr!” he shuddered again, shaking bits of icy crystals from his hat.

“I suspect it won’t be any warmer tomorrow. Today’s a day to be grateful _not_ to live at Nonnatus House,” she said, setting her own hat on its peg in the hall. “Though I suppose none of us do live at dear old Nonnatus anymore,” she remembered, with a slight pang, which was quickly driven from her mind by the sight of Patrick unwrapping his scarf and sliding it comfortably from his neck, before doffing his coat.

“It was too cold for you there,” he said gently, stepping forward to help her draw off her rose-buttoned coat. She knew he was thinking of her still-recovering lungs, and she was grateful for his care, if totally unwilling to admit to her own frailty. One ill and recuperating family member was entirely enough, and it was Timothy now instead of her.

She turned to face Patrick.

“Are we staying a while?” Some shade in her aquamarine eyes told him there was a right answer.

“I hope so,” he said, landing a soft kiss on her hairline again, both hands on her shoulders.

“Good,” she said, and promptly slipped off her shoes, leaving her even shorter and more irresistible in front of him. It could, he reflected dimly, be a very long night if she was going to keep being this cute.

He joined her in leaving his wet shoes to dry in the hall, but didn’t immediately follow her into the living room. Instead, he padded into the kitchen, where he opened one of the high cabinets above the stove. Shelagh had never looked up there, before—being out of reach, and therefore out-of-mind.

As she located her slippers and settled into the sofa, he took down from the back corner of the cupboard a dusty bottle of wine and two matching smaller bottles she didn’t recognize. He brought them to the living room and set them down on the sideboard, next to the crystal bottle of brandy.

“Grateful patients,” he said, turning to her, “have a habit of sending things I don’t know what to do with.”

“I see,” she said, surveying the offerings. One bottle of table red, and two of pear cider, of a stiffer mettle than Babycham. “I suppose the cider would be the most champagne-like,” she reflected, as Patrick combed a hand through his forelock anxiously.

“Of course,” he said, turning to the sideboard again and crouching to open it. He rummaged in the back of it a bit, affording Shelagh a rather nice view of the back of his jacket. “…the most grateful of patients send this.”

He emerged, and straightened round to face her, holding a tall, slim cardboard box on display.

“Is that,” Shelagh’s heart perked up hopefully, “Scotch?”

“Do you like it?” he asked instead of answering. He was looking at her curiously. This wasn’t quite the response he had expected.

A small, softly guilty smile coloured her face. “It’s been years,” she said. “But at last blush, yes—very much. Especially if that’s what I think it is.”

Patrick could have fallen over with surprise. This was shaping up to be much, much better than he had dared expect.

“And what _do_ you think it is, love?” he asked. Shelagh could have giggled at the odd mixture of shock and tenderness in his face.

“Unless I’m very much mistaken, the Glenlivet. Not my favourite, but close enough.” She smiled pertly up at him, for once fully aware of what she was doing.

_GOD,_ he loved this woman!

“And I’d be interested to know which patient in Poplar ever gave you _that_.” _I may have to kill her_ , Shelagh thought grimly.

Patrick grinned, downright devilishly. “ I _am_ my own GP,” he said, settling next her on the sofa.

“I see,” she laughed.

He set the box on the table, then popped off the settee again. “Glasses!” he exclaimed, traipsing back to the sideboard. She watched him as he took two of the crystal ones from around the brandy bottle, and blew the dust out of them. Mentally, Shelagh made a note to see those were washed and dusted regularly, in future. Tonight, however, she wouldn’t complain.

Patrick returned, setting the glasses next to the box of Scotch on the coffee table. He straightened, pulled off his suit jacket, and tossed it haphazardly across the chair behind him. Shelagh made a rather half-hearted mental note to remind him to hang it up before she left.

He settled down next to her on the sofa and hefted the box in one hand. Quietly, he slipped it open and withdrew the bottle full of amber liquid, which glinted in the half-light from the lamp. Slowly, he turned it over in his hands, watching her face.

“I didn’t know if you would like this.”

“Patrick,” she said, tucking her chin in a very good facsimile of innocence. “I _am_ a Scot.”

“There are Englishmen who don’t like gin.”

“Name one,” she challenged him.

He set the bottle on the table reflectively.

“Teetotallers?” he hazarded.

“They like it, too—they just don’t drink it,” she said. It occurred to him vaguely that she might have some experience with that kind of self-restraint.

He broke the seal on the new bottle and removed its cap before setting it back on the table.

“I thought I’d have to teach you to drink this.”

She studied his face carefully. Then she positively smirked. “I’m sorry to deprive you of the pleasure, dear. But a wee dram every now and again is already among my vices.”

He leaned one elbow on the back of the couch, staring at her rather stupidly. She thought he was so adorable when her humanity made him completely nonplussed.

In truth, Patrick was wanting to promptly ask her what the rest of her vices were, but he felt that would be rather getting ahead of things before they even started drinking. So instead, he just stared at her wonderingly, his mouth half-agape. By times, he didn’t know this woman yet.

Without waiting for him, Shelagh bent forward, and using both hands, carefully tipped the bottle into first his glass, then hers. Setting it down, she surveyed her work.

“Well,” she giggled. “They’re slightly more generous than I meant for first pours. But it _is_ a holiday. And we’ve so much to celebrate!”

She lifted both glasses and held his out to him.

He took it from her softly, meeting her eyes. “We do, indeed,” he said.

“To family,” she said, clinking glasses with his. She shuddered visibly as the first sip worked its way down her body, trailing warmth from her throat to her belly.

“I thought you liked this,” he joked.

“It’s been a while,” she said testily, and he threw back his head and guffawed.

“To us!” he toasted, and they took another sip. Shelagh found this one went down rather more easily. She’d forgotten there was something of an art to drinking Scotch whisky.

Some sips and more laughter into their glasses, Shelagh had settled herself deeper into the sofa, almost to Patrick’s side. He wondered briefly about slipping an arm around her, but felt he was pushing his luck so far with the Scotch already that he wasn’t sure he dared. He refilled their glasses instead, just a small pour. They’d both need to watch what they drank before he took her home.

By mid-second-glass, he was surprised to find Shelagh nestled under his arm anyway, and apparently very comfortable.

She turned her smiling face up toward him, eyes radiant behind their lenses.

“I think this is much better than a New Year’s Eve party would have been,” she observed.

“Mmmm,” he assented, watching her indulgently.

Truthfully, Shelagh was beginning to feel very warm, indeed—and she rather suspected that if she stood up, she would give away the vast decrease in her tolerance which seemed to have occurred since the last time she drank whisky in any volume.

_I shall just have to continue sitting down_ , she thought to herself. Given that she was now curled up against Patrick’s side, that seemed no obstacle. It was early yet. They had plenty of time.

The conversation drifted—through who from Nonnatus was staying where, to a thorough review of Timothy’s care, to a brief and inconclusive discussion about what they would do for him when the school term started again if he hadn’t been discharged yet. The end of the second glass had gone down, and Patrick attempted to refuse her another one, but had been persuaded by her pleading eyes into splitting one with her. Upon realizing she’d drunk far more of their shared glass than he had, Patrick forfeited, and poured himself a third.

“It isn’t midnight yet,” she’d offered by way of explanation, snuggling her head into his shoulder. Patrick had, by now, long since loosened his tie, undone his top shirt buttons, crossed his legs, and fallen back deep into the sofa against her side.

“Suppose it’s not,” he observed. They went on talking softly, but he began to be increasingly uncertain what they were prattling on about. He said something, and she laughed—a full-throated, golden sort of laugh, full of all the bell-clear beauty of her singing voice.

“Where’d you learn to sing?” he asked suddenly.

She stopped, looking at him suddenly with more clarity.

“I’m not sure I did learn,” she said slowly. “Oh, I had lessons—in secondary school. But I sang long before that. I suppose I must have learned in church, as a wee one. And I don’t think my mother ever had any training, but she loved music. She used to buy as many records as we could spare the space and money for. Handel’s ‘Messiah,’ and ‘Rhapsody in Blue,’ and Benny Goodman, and Gospel songs from the states. Dad liked those—the Gospel songs—and the Andrews sisters. I don’t know if he ever sang, really, but he listened. And he danced. He had two left feet, but he used to swing me around all the same, and I didn’t mind. We used to dance to Glenn Miller—though that was after Mama died. She would have loved him.”

She smiled a far-away little smile.

“Glenn Miller,” Patrick said. He remembered some good dances to that, with some rather pretty girls. Some of them even before the war.

“I was so devastated when he disappeared over the Channel,” she mused. “I’d only just come to nursing school that year.”

“Don’t even tell me how old you were,” Patrick pleaded.

Blue eyes twinkled up at him through demure lashes.

“Eighteen,” she laughed, and he groaned and clapped his glass to his forehead.

“I’m a cradle-robber,” he moaned, and she chuckled, positively wickedly.

“Oh, by my calculations, you were only—” she tried to count on her fingers, but one hand was still occupied by a dwindling glass of whisky.

“Never you mind,” he said, making a playful pass at her fingers, but she squirmed away and continued counting carefully.

“Not quite twice as old as me!” she crowed finally.

“Stop it, you!” he laughed, leaning forward.

She bit her bottom lip, her face a picture of glee, and Patrick could no longer help himself. He bent closer, and caught her lip in his instead. One soft kiss was enough to hush her teasing, and cause her to glance up into his face, quite starry-eyed. His free hand had returned to her hair, stroking it and tucking it gently behind her ear.

Dimly, she heard herself say, “If you kiss me like that, you can be any age you want.”

_Goodness!_ She hadn’t actually _said_ that aloud, had she?

From the adoring look on Patrick’s face, she was fairly certain she had.

“Whisky?” she asked brightly. Whatever possessed him to let her pour another glass again for them both must have been either madness or pure miscalculation.

It wasn’t long after that that he realized she had, at some point along the way, doffed her slippers, and now sat curled up in just her stocking feet. Patrick couldn’t explain why, but somehow the sight of her little nearly-bare feet made him intensely aware that the only thing between her legs and him was a translucent layer of silk. He traced his eyes over the shimmer of her stockings up her leg—over her anklebone, across the curve of her calf, around her knee nearest him, and up to where they disappeared under her rumpled skirt. He swallowed. A rogue vision of what her suspender belt might look like was trying to invade his mind and make him lose his senses.

They had both, he reflected, had much too much to drink.

She was talking again, and he attempted to attend diligently. To be fair, Shelagh herself wasn’t entirely sure what she was saying—though she could hear her own accent coming in thicker than normal. He noticed it too, and it made him want to kiss her again, but he held back.

Shelagh, for her part, began to be aware that, midnight or no midnight, she certainly wouldn’t be going anywhere until the New Year. She had her doubts she could have stood unaided. Mrs Wiggens was definitely going to take a dim view.

_Let her_ , Shelagh thought, and managed to keep the thought inside her own head this time. _I_ am _engaged to him_.

In a vain attempt to steady things a bit, Patrick divested himself of his empty glass and stretched languidly across the arm of the sofa until he could reach his jacket, from whence he extracted his cigarette case and lighter.

He turned back over one shoulder toward her.

“Henley?” he asked, holding up two. She nodded, and suddenly he grinned, and shoved one back in the case. “We’ll share.”

He settled back next to her, with just a bit more space in between them this time, and struck the lighter. As the first tingling puff filled his lungs, Patrick remembered that he had actually been thinking that it had been easier to talk to her, sometimes, when she was Sister Bernadette. With the habit as protection, other parts of her had seemed so unguarded. He remembered the liveliness in her face as they’d shared his cigarette on a chill spring morning.

As he had then, he extended the Henley toward her. As she had then, she smiled conspiratorially and took it from him. As he had done then—but would never have dared to admit—he watched her close her lips where his had just been. They shared the cigarette in silence, a rich understanding dwelling between them. She had barely stubbed it out in the ashtray when he looked at her sharply.

“I still can’t believe you like Scotch!” he blurted out.

“Patrick,” she chided, rolling her eyes. “ Whyever not?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “After all, you were a—”

Swiftly, she was pressed very near his chest, one of her fingers perched delicately against his lips.

She stared at him, and he at her.

Then she leaned even closer, and practically purred, “Yes, but I’m not a nun anymore, am I?”

A shiver ran down his spine—or would have, if his heart and her bodyweight hadn’t also warmed the entire front of him at the exact same moment.

No, she was not a nun anymore. _This girl!_ She did things to him. Habit or no habit. And right now, she was staring up adoringly—somewhat drunkenly, but adoringly—into his face.

He could resist no longer. He clasped both hands around her face and clasped her lips in his. He kissed her full on the mouth. Then her top lip. Then her bottom lip. Then her bottom lip again, more slowly. She responded in kind, moving with him. One of her hands snaked up to twine itself in the fabric of his shirt, just below his open collar. He thought he would choke, but he kept kissing her. Warmth repaid warmth—kiss for kiss, she met him, until he slipped his tongue between her lips and deepened the kiss dramatically. Unphased, Shelagh slipped her hand from his collar around to the back of his neck. When she twined her fingers in the short hair there, he thought it might kill him. The next second, she shocked him completely by shoving her tongue into his mouth in return.

All semi-conscious thought fled, for both of them. There was only the precious nearness of each other—lips and hands and heart and heat of the beloved. The very last thing Patrick clearly remembered _thinking_ about was that he took her glass from her before she had a chance to spill it down his back. “Wee dram” or not, it was better on the arm of the sofa than—

Her eyes met his, and he went back to where they were. Heat was curling places in Shelagh’s body she’d never felt before, and it was making her feel odd. Patrick wasn’t far behind. His hand twined in her hair as he held her closer, then gently leaned her back flat into the cushions. He kissed her lips, and her face, and her jawline. Softly, he trailed kisses down the side of her white neck, losing himself in the taste of her. Foggily, Shelagh was conscious of the fact that she had no idea what to do with her hands. She removed her spectacles and tossed them with abandon onto the end table behind her. He didn’t seem to mind as she then rubbed circles into his back and shoulders weakly. She hadn’t known his breath on her neck could be so very, very warm! He’d kissed her there before, but not like this. Not with fire and pressure that almost—

“Oh!” she gasped. “Ohhhh.” He paused, searching her face. “Okay?” he asked, His voice was strange—husky. She liked it, so she nodded, a slow smile spreading over her features.

_Damn that dress and its conservative neckline!_ he thought. He’d have had to unzip the back of it to get it off her, and even drunk, that seemed going a little far. He settled for tracing a finger down from where he’d been kissing, over her collarbone, and skimming lightly over the brown printed fabric. Shelagh held still, watching him with eyes glazed over with love. Well—love and Scotch. A potent combination.

She felt she was waiting for something, although she couldn’t quite think what. When his hand slipped lower to caress one breast through the fabric of her dress and underpinnings, she knew. She sighed deeply, and in half a second, he had kissed her again, one hand still in her hair, one thumb softly stroking over her roundness, then sliding down her side and around her back to press her closer to him. Again and again, they drew breath as one, until Shelagh writhed under him in dangerous ways. Really, he should stop—he—

The clock on the mantle chimed midnight, and she looked up, startled.

“Patrick!” she exclaimed. “It’s midnight! On Hogmanay! We have to celebrate!”

“I thought we were,” he murmured, justifiably confused as she somehow extracted herself from under him and attempted to stand. The endeavour was not successful—that is, she was about half-upright when she stumbled forward and would have laid herself full-out across the coffee table if he hadn’t caught her arm.

“Steady there!” he said, feeling entirely unsteady himself.

“We have to toast to the New Year!” she made a pass at the glass he’d taken from her earlier, knocking it to the floor.

“Oh! Damn,” she said, and he’d never bloody loved her more, even as he caught at the back of her skirt to steady her once again.

“Where’s the other one?’ she asked.

“Here,” he replied. “And you don’t need any more.”

“Nonsense!” she exclaimed. “We must toast the New Year!” She reached precipitously for the bottle again.

“Oh, no!” he said, catching back her hand and kissing it. She submitted to his kiss, but only while reaching for the bottle with his other hand. She was surprisingly strong, for a woman couldn’t presently stand up straight.

“Shelagh!” he imprisoned both her hands and set her down lightly on the sofa. “Stop. I’ll pour it.”

He dropped the smallest amount of liquor imaginable into the cup, and then stoppered the bottle firmly.

Like a wobbly jack-in-the-box, she had she had popped up at his elbow again, wrapping herself around his arm for support.

“How can we toast if only you have a glass?” she asked. Her hair was rumpled and wavy, her lips pink and swollen with his kisses. God, he could have looked at her like this forever!

“Patrick?” she insisted, pulling on his arm.

“We’ll lift it together,” he said, proud of himself for his own cleverness.

She wrapped her hand over his on the glass and lifted it aloft.

“To 1959!” she yelled, and he wisely helped her to take the first sip.

“To 1959, indeed,” he said, knocking back the rest of the glass before she could get any ideas.

He half-expected her to break out into Auld Lang Syne, but her powers of focus were not such as to overcome the distraction of his smiling face.

“Happy New Year, Patrick,” she whispered.

“Happy New Year, Shelagh,” he whispered back, and kissed her again, intimate yet tender and sweet. She reciprocated, then giggled thrillingly against his mouth.

“I suppose this makes me your first-foot.”

“My first _WHAT_?” he said, mystified.

“Your first-foot. Your first guest of the New Year. It’s a very important tradition of Hogmanay,” she said seriously.

He smiled, and she went on.

“Traditionally,”—she slurred the second “t” a little bit—“tall, dark-haired men are preferred to be one’s first-foot. For luck.” Her “r’s” were rolling from the back of her throat in the pure music of Aberdeenshire. “But since you can’t visit where I live, because Mrs Wiggens would have your head, I suppose we’ll have to reverse the tradition by me visiting the tall, dark-haired man.”

She lifted her eyes to his, and he saw there something brave and loyal—something that hearkened to untold years of Scots character far more than the perfume of whisky on her breath did. She was a marvel.

“I think,” he murmured, pulling her close in front of him, “a small, golden-haired Scotswoman visiting my house at all is already quite remarkable luck.” He kissed her soundly. “You can be my first-foot any day.”

She reached for his shoulders, took a step, and pitched sideways at an alarming angle.

“Whoops!” he said, striding to her side, but she caught his hand and pulled, and before too long, he found himself kissing her up against the doorframe leading to the bedrooms. Up against the wall, she was more stable, and one or the other of them renewed their snogging like teenagers. Lips met lips, and ears and eyes and hands, in a tangle of adoration. She twisted her fingers in his shirt front again.

When had all the buttons of his waistcoat come undone? Surely, she hadn’t…

Shelagh ran her teeth lightly along Patrick’s lower lip, causing a shudder to course through him. And then—

My God! Was she pulling his shirt buttons free?

“Shelagh,” he whispered. Her face was flushed and strangely intent. “Shelagh!”

She reached her hands around his back and began trying to tug his shirt out of his trousers.

“Shelagh, you’ve very drunk.” He slowly detached her clinging little hands from his hips. But she only grinned, all dimples and tousled honey hair and shining eyes.

“Indubitably,” she said, and fought to free her hands with some tenacity.

Was that—dear God! Was he seeing this correctly?

The look in her eyes, as she stared up at him, was something more than boozey. It was impish. Playful. Downright shameless.

Patrick nearly forgot himself then and there.

For so long, she had been tender and sweet and shy. Overwhelmed by the bigness of all that was happening to her and around her and within herself.

And now suddenly, a brazenness—miles beyond anything he’d ever dreamed of with Sister Bernadette and that damn Henley—crackled forth from her as she gazed steadily up into his eyes, a slightly silly smile edging across her flushed little face in the half-light.

_Good God, if_ this _was what she’d been hiding!_ He’d never until that moment fully realized what he had feared when he felt Sister Bernadette’s spirit was gone, but now in an instant, he knew it wasn’t the case. Much as he loved her, he’d never truly dared imagine that an ex-nun would be naughty and teasing and—

If she kept looking at him like that, he really would have to lay her flat against something in this house, and quickly. _Jesus_. This woman was going to be the death of him.

She giggled, a peculiar sound, slightly caught in her throat. Her cheeks were pink with Scotch and embarrassment and…something else. Blue eyes met his, and with a start, Patrick realized that she knew exactly what he was thinking.

_Shit!_

She was pinned between him and the wall, shooting him white-hot looks and twining her fingers in his floppy hair, and they were both utterly too drunk for him to even consider taking her where they both clearly wanted to go.

“Not tonight, my love,” he whispered tenderly, stroking her own hair back and cradling her face. “I don’t know what you’re expecting, but tonight, we stop here. But soon…”

She fell limp across his breast, nestling her golden head against him, and hiccoughing.

“Let’s get you to bed.”

She looked up at him, briefly indignant, before he placed a finger over her lips.

“Here,” he whispered. “On the sofa. Like old times.”

Exhaustion creeping over her, Shelagh didn’t protest. Her head was beginning to feel funny, anyway.

In the soft light, Patrick stumbled with her back over to the couch, where she sat down almost willingly.

“Water,” he said, unceremoniously, and her eyes—trebly blurred by liquor, love, and lack of distance vision—followed the outline of his shape as he appeared on the brighter side of the kitchen hatch, filled a large glass, and returned.

Wordlessly, she took it from him and even managed to drink most of it.

A thoroughly different horizontal desire was beginning to come over her as she lay down and curled to face him. He settled on the floor and let her clasp his hand in hers.

“I love you, Shelagh,” he whispered.

She smiled, looking every bit the sweet and innocent woman he’d known before tonight.

“I love you, too” she whispered back, and in a matter of moments, she was asleep, bright locks spilled out on the bright velvet of the settee.

He waited long enough to be sure she was really asleep, then he kissed her hand softly—just near the little gold ring that held them in troth. He stumbled groggily to his feet. In his attempt to turn the lamp and the kitchen light off, he tripped over the dropped Scotch glass and swore, but she only stirred slightly.

Poor thing. She was going to have a right royal headache in the morning. She’d wonder what on earth had hit her. _He_ was going to wonder what had hit him!

He thought briefly about leaving her to retreat to his bed, but he was afraid she might be sick during the night, so after his own infusion of water, he arranged himself instead in the nearby chair, stretched out long. He’d hear her if she needed anything. Doctor’s instincts, you know…

The next thing he did know was that morning light had broken, he had a ghastly crick in his neck, and his head was pounding horribly. A soft, stirring sound recalled Shelagh to his mind, and he cracked his swollen eyelids and smiled at the sight of her, asleep in her rumpled little brown dress on his sofa. He wouldn’t wake her yet. But when he did, it would be with a kiss, and the words—

“Happy New Year, my love. Aspirin?”

**Author's Note:**

> This is the closest your humble writer Sissi has ever gotten to sorta-almost-smut. I hope it’s passably convincing. LMK if you like it.


End file.
